Sunday, September 7, 2014

This Week in FRC: Sep 1st - 7th 2014

FRC had a relatively slow week. Nearly all teams are back in school and there weren't any off-season events this week. We do have some CAD Tutorials for you and news from a few other major robot competitions.

973 RAMP CAD Tutorials

FRC#973 Greybots and their mentor Adam Heard are back it making their RAMP CAD tutorial videos. These are the best FRC design tutorials out there. Adam does a great job of explaining his design decisions and walking you through how they would design features into their robots. If you are new to CAD this is a great place to learn. Much of it is designed for teams with limited machining resources.

Their latest release covers the design of a completely COTS (commercial off the shelf) single jointed arm. They show you several simple ways to improve the robustness of the arm.

FRC Season Calendar

Much of the FRC season calendar was flushed out this week with the release of the district event dates.

VEX World Championship, Louisville, April 15-18

VEX announced that they would be moving the 2015 World Championship from it's prior home in Anaheim to it's new home in Louisville Kentucky. This move also allows them to put the event on the weekend before the FRC Championship so teams that compete in both events won't have to decide which to attend this year. The new venue will allow for more teams and it also moves the event closer to the center of the country making travel easier for many of the US teams.

Here is the announcement video.

FRC Blog

Just a reminder about the new Youth Protection Program and it's impact on registration and a look at some of the Beta teams like 1114 who have been posting videos and images of the 2015 RoboRio control system.

Who's at Salt Lake Comic Con this Weekend?
Teams are doing a large demo at the Salt Lake Comic Con. We demoed at the Houston comic book festival, Comicpalooza, and it was a huge success. You can see some highlights here. If there are any events like this in your area we highly recommend you get in touch with the organizers and try to get FRC a presence. They are a great opportunity to introduce FRC to more people.